In the Forward’s opinion section, you’ll find analysis and essays from diverse corners of the Jewish world.
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Opinion
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Opinion
A Dangerous Link
The Obama administration’s offer of a package of advanced weaponry and military assistance worth billions of dollars in return for an Israeli commitment to freeze settlement construction for just three months marks a troubling development in the relationship between the two allies. There’s a reason that this deal has drawn criticism from an unusual chorus…
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Opinion Looking at Haiti
The images beamed from Haiti seem to go from very bad to unbearably worse. The nation was already the poorest in the hemisphere before the January 12 earthquake crushed the landscape and killed hundreds of thousands. Then came the sight of more than a million displaced people living in over-crowded, squalid refugee camps. Then the…
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Opinion Hanukkah Time
Hanukkah comes early this year, in the way that Jewish holidays seem always to be early, or late, but never on time because it’s not at all clear what that means. In America, we live by two calendars. They rarely match, but they do instruct. When Hanukkah is late — that is, close to Christmas…
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Opinion Thankful That the Pilgrims Didn’t Shoot a Wild Boar
Erev Thanksgiving, and I am as every year dazzled by how very Jewish this holiday is — in its way, every bit as Jewish as Hanukkah, now just days away. Think on it: Suppose the Pilgrims had bumped into a wild boar instead of encountering a turkey. Thanksgiving’s centerpiece would be on oinker rather than…
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Opinion Uproar as Haredi Lawmaker Urges Yeshiva Boys to Join Army, Get Jobs
We’ve been talking a lot lately about the rising proportion of ultra-Orthodox or Haredi Jews in the Israeli population, and the various challenges it poses to Israeli society. Most dramatic are the declining proportion of 18-year-olds who will be available for military service, since the great majority of Haredi men claim an exemption as full-time…
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Opinion Occupation Is the Issue; BDS Is a Distraction
In case you haven’t noticed, the sky is falling. Yes, again. This time it’s the imminent danger of the Global BDS movement. BDS: Boycott, divestment, sanctions. Soon, we’re told, very soon, Israel will be crippled, its economy in ruins, its legitimacy destroyed. Accordingly, a mobilization to oppose the Global BDS movement is now the highest…
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Opinion Deficits ’R’ Us
The joint recommendations of a bipartisan commission led by Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson and charged with balancing the federal budget included such incendiary ideas as raising the retirement age for Social Security and making its benefits more progressive. That these ideas are politically difficult doesn’t mean they should be dismissed. On the contrary. The…
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Opinion Still Necessary: Journalists and Rabbis in the 21st Century
This is an excerpt of the keynote speech given November 11 at the annual meeting of the Jewish Reconstructionist Federation in Newport Beach, Calif. I understand that your movement is struggling with major challenges, some of them institutional, some existential. So is journalism today. I have no magical prescription to offer, but I do think…
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Letters November 26, 2010
Abandoning the Ezra Vision I was pleased to read your article about Project Ezra and Misha Avramoff, my friend and colleague at Project Ezra for almost 30 years (Old-School Jewish Activist Faces the Future as Project Ezra Prepares for Merger, November 12 issue). The article, however, missed the central part of the story. It did…
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Opinion How To Rehabilitate Israel’s Lost Love for Labor
Thoughtful readers are having trouble explaining the strangely quiescent mood in Israel these days. Given the precarious state of the peace process, mounting poverty, religious tension and terrorist missiles lining the borders, you might expect livelier debates. Where’s the noise? Here’s a clue: The Labor Party, once led by David Ben-Gurion and Yitzhak Rabin, is…
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Opinion Thinking Big
The English word large has been absorbed into Hebrew, but in Hebrew, large is not a physical measure. It’s a measure of character, and describes an aspect of the Israeli character. “Tihiyeh large,” Israelis exhort each other: “Be generous, expansive, grand.” At its best, being large is the capacity to expand beyond one’s limitations. When,…
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